Roald Dahl: 5 Things You Didn't Know

He consequently got chummy with the city's elite (including the Roosevelts), attending social events and, when possible, scoring a few sexual conquests, including Millicent Rogers (heiress to Standard Oil) and writer Clare Boothe Luce, married at the time to Henry Robinson Luce, the man who launched Time, Sports Illustrated and Fortune magazines to name a few.

4- Roald Dahl was accused of plagiarism

Published in Playboy in 1965, "The Visitor" was a short story about a man whose inheritance from a germophobic uncle includes a diary. The last entry in the diary tells a story about a night the uncle spent at an isolated castle owned by a wealthy man. The uncle spends the evening flirting with the man's wife and daughter. Later that night, a woman comes to his room and has sex with him, but in the morning he can't discern which one it was and neither is giving him any sign. As he's preparing to leave, the uncle asks the man why he lives in such isolation. He tells him that he has not one but two daughters, one of whom has leprosy — but not to worry, as leprosy only contagious through "intimate contact."

According to history professor Norton H. Moses, Dahl took the story from a book by Dod Osbourne called Master of the Girl Pat. Dahl changed the narrative to first-person and substantially lengthened the story, yet Norton still refers to it as "10% plagiarism and 90% inspiration."

5- Roald Dahl believed Salman Rushdie got what he deserved

The last thing you didn't know about Roald Dahl is how petty he could sometimes be.

In September of 1988, writer Salman Rushdie published The Satanic Verses, a novel that featured what many Muslims felt was an irreverent depiction of the prophet Mohammad. Five months later, Iran's Ayatollah Khomeini issued a fatwa, or Islamic ruling, calling for Rushdie's execution for blasphemy. Over 1,000 writers including J.M. Coetzee, Umberto Eco, Thomas Keneally, Kenzaburo Oe, Larry McMurtry, Toni Morrison, and Kurt Vonnegut lined up to defend Rushdie's right to free speech and free expression. Roald Dahl was not among them.

In a letter to the Times, Dahl stated in effect that Rushdie got what he deserved because, in his estimation, it was nothing more than a publicity stunt by Rushdie. For various reasons, Jeremy Treglown speculates that overwhelming envy, more than any other factor, fueled Dahl's response.

Special thanks to The Roald Dahl Museum and Story Centre for providing all images for this article. To learn more about the man behind the written words, visit www.roalddahlmuseum.org.